Mall of America: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back, in new ride

A new thrill ride with a blast-from-the-past name is coming to Mall of America - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Shock.

The ride will open in mid-March at the megamall's Nickelodeon Universe. It promises to "take riders 70 feet in the air in a matter of seconds, reaching up to 25 miles per hour," the park posted on its Facebook page.

Bridget Jewell, a mall spokeswoman, said Wednesday that the ride is the first of its kind in the United States. It features 12 single-bucket seats at the end of a mechanical arm, rotating around a central tower.

Riders will have some ability to control the motion of their seats so they "can rotate wildly like a plane propeller or a gentle teeter-totter," she said.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a popular cartoon craze in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the four main characters - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael - haven't been so visible in recent decades.

Nickelodeon is planning to revive the franchise and will introduce a computer-generated animation series on its network sometime in 2012. A feature film also is said to be in the works, so the ride's name is aimed at helping to revive the Turtles brand.

A second attraction, featuring what Jewell called "mammoth-scale slides" will open March 1. That ride, called Dutchman's Deck Anchor Drop, will be connected to the overhead ropes course, and allow folks to slide down two intertwining tubes - one 35 feet tall, the other 56 feet tall.